Data Charmer Rogier van der Geer promoted in particle physics

On September 1st 2015, our very own Rogier successfully defended his thesis titled "Searches for new physics through single top". We at GoDataDriven congratulate him with this great achievement. With this addition, the team now totals no less than six PhD's!

Atlas and the Large Hadron Collider (CERN)

Rogier's research focused on the analysis of data recorded by the Atlas experiment, the largest of the particle detectors of the Large Hadron Collider.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a 27 km long circular particle accelerator buried 100 meters under the franco-swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland and smashes protons into each other at almost the speed of light.

Since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, the Standard Model of particle physics, which describes all elementary particles and their interactions, is complete. Nevertheless it still has some shortcomings: it fails to explain the existence of dark matter and the matter/anti-matter asymmetry in the universe. Therefore there has to be more: "new physics" or physics beyond the Standard Model.

Dark matter

In the roughly 1 billion collisions created by the LHC each second Rogier searched for the rare collisions in which only a top quark is produced. In these processes, Rogier searched for deviations from the Standard Model which could provide hints on why our universe contains primarily matter and hardly any anti-matter. In his thesis he searched for CP-violating processes involving a bottom quark: both directly and indirectly through the creation of a single top quark (usually processes generate a pair of top/anti-top quarks).

If you're interested in reading more about Rogier van der Geer's research, feel free to read the thesis 'Searches for new physics through single top'

Data Charmer

While finishing his thesis, Rogier joined GoDataDriven as Data Charmer. In this role, Rogier applies his academic background to the business-related problems of GoDataDriven's clients. Recent projects include the optimization of a popularity prediction model for mobile apps and a predictive supply chain management model for a large, fresh food production company.

Rob Dielemans, Managing Director of GoDataDriven says; "The nature of our projects requires our Data Scientists to make sense out of enormous amounts of data. A PhD contributes a lot to being successful as a Data Scientist. Besides intelligence, obtaining a Phd requires a lot of perseverance and hard work. Rogier has truly earned this title and we are convinced of the bright future that lies ahead of him."